The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training
Foreign Affairs Oral History Project
MINISTER RICHARD P. BUTRICK
Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy
Initial interview date: March 25, 1993
Copyright 1998 ADST
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Background
Born in 1894, raised in New York state
U.S. Bureau of Fisheries
Georgetown University
Father Walsh
Entered Consular Service
Valparaiso, Chile
Consular officer
1921-1922
Guayaquil, Ecuador
Consul and acting consul general
Yellow fever eradiation
Cacao market
Coup d’etat
Local problems and environment
1923-1926
St. Johns, New Brunswick, Canada
Consul
1932
Hankow, China
Consular officer
Getting there
Communist takeover during Long March
End of Foreign concessions
Dealing with Chinese communists
Yangtze River patrol
Japanese
1926-1932
Shanghai, China
Consular officer
International settlement
U.S. interests
1932-1940
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Chungking, China
Counselor embassy
1941
Peking, China
Officer in charge
Surrender to Japanese
Treatment by Japanese
Evacuation
1941-1942
Inspection Corps
1942
Santiago, Chile
Economic counselor
Wartime relations
1942-1944
Inspection Corps
Foreign Service administration
1944-1946
Manila, Philippines
Advisor to president pf Philippines
1946-1947
Reykjavík, Iceland
U.S. minister
U.S. airfield at Keflavik
Iceland joins NATO
1948-1949
Director General of Foreign Service
1949-1952
Montreal, Canada
Consul general
1952-1955
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Consul general
1955-1959
INTERVIEW
Q: Today is March 25, 1993. This is an interview with Richard P. Butrick on behalf of the
Association for Diplomatic Studies and I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. I would like to start
this off with a bit about your background...where and when you were born, etc.
BUTRICK: I was born in Lockport, New York in 1894. I was an only child. I went to
school in Lockport Union School and graduated from the high school department in
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1913. Then I went into the Bureau of Fisheries and served in New York State and
Colorado.
Q: Was this the United States Bureau of Fisheries?
BUTRICK: Yes, the United States Bureau of Fisheries. Later on through examination I
obtained a position in Washington and was in the Auditor's Office. I worked for some
time there. I took courses at the beginning of the Foreign Service School in Georgetown.
I more or less self-educated myself in Spanish until I became fluent enough to pass the
consular examination in Spanish which was a two day and rather stiff examination. I was
one of the few that passed it. I entered the Consular Service. Along with me were Willard
Beaulac, John Muccio and Fletcher Warren, making up the four who entered the
Consular Service at that time. Warren, Beaulac and myself, as vice consuls, and John
Muccio had some title a little lower than that because he was a little younger than the rest
of us.
My first post was in Valparaiso, Chile.
Q: You were there from 1921-22.
BUTRICK: Well, not that long. It was a "break-in" post for me and I learned a lot of
practical matters there. As an example, I acquired a hand gun and it was necessary to
register it in the mayoralty. There were 7 men and 3 women in the secretariat waiting in
the reception room. I strode up to the receptionist and explained what I wanted. He arose
and said loudly, "el senor Vice Consul Americano desea permiso para llevar su pistota."
The 7 men broke out in raucous laughter. The 3 women bowed their heads and smiled. I
asked the Secretary, "Enrique, what in the world did I say?" He replied, "You asked for a
permit to carry your penis." He then issued me a "certificado para cargar revolver." After
about six months, I was transferred to Iguique to take over from the consul who was
going on home leave.
At Iguique, which was an active seaport, the climate was mild year 'round. It never
rained, but often clouded up as though it was about to rain. Often passengers on British
ships would come ashore with their umbrellas. The children would look at them and say:
"esta lloviendo en Londres."
I had a room in the consulate but ate all meals at the local hotel. Often, I would call the
waiter and have him change my soup because it had a fly in it which he always gracefully
did. After many such occasions, I finally decided it was simpler to flick the fly out myself
and enjoy the soup. In other ways I found it simpler and more effective to adjust to local
customs and habits and this stood me in good stead throughout my career.
One of my friends was a Swiss who worked for W.R. Grace & Co. He was fluent in 5
languages. One day I lauded him for this accomplishment. He replied, "Dick, it is much
less worse to be a fool in one language than in five." I never forgot that, which reminds
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me of a remark attributed to President Truman who characterized the State Department as
being "a bunch of over-educated fools".
At Iguique I met John B. Faust, a chemist at a nitrate plant in the high pampas. Several
years later in Washington he introduced me to a charming girl, Gretchen Daniel, who
became my wife and later the mother of our two children, Ann and Dick Jr., both born in
Shanghai. (Gretchen died of cancer in 1945. Early in 1937 I married Rachel Davies, who
among other accomplishments is tri-lingual in English, Spanish and Welsh.)
I served in Iguique for several months and was then transferred to Guayaquil, Ecuador
where I served for two and a half years, most of the time in charge of the Consulate
General.
There were three of us in the office and the three of us ran it. I did the economic reporting
and general representation. I knew all the authorities and was friendly with them. One of
my assistants, an American citizen, took care of citizenship matters for Americans, and
the third person, who was an Ecuadorian, took care of the consular invoices and the
routine operations of the office. The three of us ran it. I suppose today in Guayaquil one
would probably have fifty or even a hundred people to run it.
Q: You were there from 1923-26.
BUTRICK: Yes. Then I came home on vacation. A new Consul General came to
Guayaquil and he came at the good season of the year and was quite pleased with the
place on the whole.
As far as living conditions were concerned it was a hell hole if there ever was one. I have
written something on it which I can give you...
Q: Yes, I would like to have it.
BUTRICK: ...to give you an idea of what Guayaquil was like in those days.
Q: Well, Thomas Nast, the famous cartoonist died there.
BUTRICK: Yes, he died there and the wife of the consul general that I succeeded died
there of yellow fever. They also had bubonic plague there. But at the time I arrived the
Rockefeller Institute had sent a member to Guayaquil to eradicate yellow fever, and he
did it. The principal thing in eradicating yellow fever was to get rid of the anopheles
mosquito which the man from the Rockefeller Institute found was being propagated in
the interior water tanks over the toilets which were open on the top. So he had them all
covered. That was a big item in eradicating yellow fever.
My period of service there was an active one. I sent a radio report in every week to the
Department about the cacao market, which was the principal cacao market of the world at
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that time. And generally speaking took care of everything else including representation
with the local authorities as well as contact with the Embassy.
On one occasion I was able to go on vacation to Riobamba and while there I called on the
local officials, including the military man. He told me that on the following Saturday he
had received orders to keep everybody in barracks. That occurred to me to be very
pertinent information and I took the first available train to Guayaquil and sent a message
in code to the Embassy indicating that there was a possibility of a coup on the following
Saturday. And actually the coup did occur and the Embassy had been forewarned by me.
I received a highly commendatory letter from the Embassy.
Q: That is one of the great moments of anybody in the Foreign Service to be able to
predict a coup.
BUTRICK: I traveled somewhat through the countryside too on horseback to Cuenca and
other places. So I was quite busy there. Also one of the outstanding things was to settle
the estate of a Virgin Islander who kept a small grocery there and died of bubonic plague.
This worried me quite a bit, but after two or three days I got over that. Fortunately I didn't
catch the plague.
Q: How about shipping and seaman? Were there problems?
BUTRICK: Well, we had some problems with seamen and shipping. The governor of the
province was in Guayaquil. We had a seaman who came ashore and was arrested and I
found out about it later on, I didn't know about it at the time. So I went to the governor
and spoke to him about it. He said, "Oh, that is quite all right, we will fix that right
away." And he did. He released the man that afternoon. And he said to me, "Oh, by the
way, I have a pony that I would like to ship up to the railroad." The railroad was built and
controlled by an American company. I said, "I will see what I can do about it." So I
arranged for the railroad to have his pony shipped up country free of charge.
Q: A little quid pro quo.
BUTRICK: Exactly.
Q: I was a consular officer for many years and know this is exactly what you do.
BUTRICK: My relationship with the community and everybody else was extremely
friendly. It was a small community. It was a terrible situation locally, physically, and
everybody realized that and we all got along together very well, including the
Ecuadorians who were very fine people. I had many interesting experiences there, but I
won't recount them.
Q: If you have time I would like to hear some of them.
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BUTRICK: Well, I perfected my colloquial Spanish in Guayaquil. One day while at the
Club, where I was usually the only foreigner present, and sitting around the table with
four or five Ecuadorians discussing the phonograph records of that era. How you adjusted
the needle, how sharp a needle should be, whether it should be tight or loose, if the record
was a little bit uneven how you played it, and the speed you played it and all this sort of
thing. I thought to myself, "Why in the world are these people talking at such length
about records?" Finally it occurred to me that they were not talking about phonograph
records at all, they were talking about sex...in terms of a phonograph record!
Q: This is the sort of thing that is not taught at the normal school in the United States.
BUTRICK: They were always playing or plotting games of some sort at the Club. One
time there was an Ecuadorian warship in the harbor and they got the idea that they could
take over the warship, the four of them. And they really did. They went out and when the
captain met them on the gangplank and took them to his room, they bound and gagged
him and took over the warship. They held it for about three days and then got off very
peacefully. They were arrested and held for a while but they were from affluent families
and nothing came of it. But it was amazing that they had arranged all of that rather openly
in the Club.
There were other things that were very amusing, but life on the whole was not very
pleasant on account of all the insects, especially the grillos that came in the thousands.
Q: Grillos are...?
BUTRICK: A form of cricket. Even the streets were covered with them. When the
automobiles would go along the street they would crack as you went over them. They
could get into your house no matter how tightly you had it screened. We also had
scorpions and all kinds of insects. The kitchen at night when I would come home would
be a menagerie. There would be rats running around, scorpions and all kinds of insects in
the kitchen of the home where I lived, which was attached to the office. So it was a pretty
tough life.
Q: Did they give you any extra pay for going to a post like that in those days?
BUTRICK: Well, you got time and a half towards retirement. I didn't get any extra pay. I
served in unhealthful posts for a great deal of my early career. I accumulated
considerable time so that I could have retired much earlier than I did. But I never got an
extra penny of pay.
Q: Could I go back just for a moment to the School of Foreign Service? What attracted
you to the School for Foreign Service and could you talk a little bit about Father Walsh
and the atmosphere?
BUTRICK: I was living at a boarding house and there was a young chap, a southern boy,
who said to me one day, "Dick, why don't you take the examination for the Consular
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Service? I am going to take it." I said, "Well, I better see what I can do about that." He
said, "Yeah, you better." So I then learned about the Foreign Service School that Father
Walsh was starting and I was among the early participants in the school. There were
others besides us who went into the Consular Service. Father Walsh was an extremely
fine man. I have forgotten the name of the man who taught us international law but he
was very well known at the time too. All in all it was most interesting. I took French there
and was not very good at it. I had a little talk with Father Walsh about my French which
was rated rather lowly on my score card and I found him to be very considerate and
everything, but he couldn't possibly change my rating. So I continued with my Spanish
and that was the language which I took when I took the two day examination for the
Consular Service.
We had one man who came in morning dress driving up in a chauffeured limousine to
take the examination. He had been in the diplomatic service abroad and was coming back
to take the examination. He did not pass and I did pass.
Q: How were classes conducted at the school?
BUTRICK: There were lectures and we had to take examinations as we went along. I
have forgotten all the details. It was upstairs in a building downtown around 7th Street. It
was not on the hill at Georgetown. The course, if I remember rightly, was about two
years.
Q: Did Father Walsh teach?
BUTRICK: Father Walsh was there all the time. He taught some of the courses, but not
all of them.
Q: Who were the students? Were they mostly older?
BUTRICK: No, they were all younger people like myself, all in their ‘20s.
Q: From what you said I take it you did not go to college?
BUTRICK: I had not been to college. Some of the others had.
Q: How did the students who came in with you do for the most part? Were they mostly
aiming for the Diplomatic or Consular Service?
BUTRICK: I don't think so because very few of them went in to the Services. They went
elsewhere, possibly with private firms operating abroad.
Q: Well, then we will move on. You left Guayaquil in 1926.
BUTRICK: While I was on temporary duty in the Department, Homer Byington who was
chief of personnel called me into his office one day and said...First I was to go to St.
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John, New Brunswick, to take over from the consul up there who was causing trouble and
refusing to leave the post. I was sent up there to relieve him. I had quite a time, I had to
handle him very diplomatically because he was a big former football player at the
University of Minnesota. It was quite a ticklish job. He finally decided that he would
come back to Washington and try to straighten out things, but I think he was discharged,
not allowed to stay on.
Then I came back to Washington again. I am not quite sure how these things fit in but
anyway, Byington called me into the office one day and said, "We have received a
request from China for the assignment of six men. We have carefully chosen them and
you are one of them." Well, I was very bucked up by that. I thought that was wonderful,
being chosen among six people. So that is how I went to China. Many years later on I
found out that the real reason why we had been selected for China was that the
Department was short of funds and we were all bachelors so they did not have to send out
families.
Q: So this was in 1926 that you were sent to China.
BUTRICK: Yes, I think so. I went to Hangzhou.
Q: Do you recall at all what happened, the feelings...the Foreign Service Act, the Rogers
Act, was signed in 1924 and you were in the Consular Service. How did you feel about
the Foreign Service?
BUTRICK: We were inducted into the Foreign Service.
Q: Did you thing it was a good thing or a bad thing?
BUTRICK: We thought it was a good thing, but we weren't really affected very much by
it because our salaries remained the same, etc. But it did offer a career which probably
the old Consular Service did not because the Diplomatic Service was separate in those
days. The Diplomatic Service was all appointed, one didn't take an examination for entry.
Q: When you were in the Consular Service what was your feeling towards the Diplomatic
Service? Did you think they were a bunch of fancy boys or something?
BUTRICK: We had no particular feeling towards them that I can remember. We
corresponded with the Embassy when we needed to. They didn't offer any oversight of
us. We were completely independent so far as I can recall.
Q: You went to Hangzhou in 1926. I assume you went by ship.
BUTRICK: I crossed the Pacific by ship and then went up the river by ship too. When I
went up the river, the Consul at Shanghai asked me to take some papers up to the Consul
in Nanking. We were always taught that the consulate should be on the sea coast, so I
expected this consulate to be near the river. When I got to Nanking it was not on the
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river, it was way back in the interior and I took a rickshaw to deliver the papers. I talked
to him a little while and by the time I got back to the river, my boat had already left.
There I was stuck. Fortunately we had a warship in the port of Nanking at the time and I
went out to the warship and they kept me for three or four days until the next river boat
came along.
Q: We had the Yangtze River Patrol there.
BUTRICK: Yes. So this destroyer, I think it was, was in Nanking at the time. They were
nice and took me on and kept me until another boat came. I was left with nothing put a
fountain pen. (At that time, the US Yangtze Patrol consisted of several ships, under the
general control of a Vice Admiral.)
Q: What was the post like at Hangzhou and what was the situation there?
BUTRICK: In Hangzhou we occupied one building, a huge building. On the first floor
were the offices, on the second floor all the bachelors had living quarters, and on the third
floor was the Consul General's residence. The Consul General at that time was Frank
Lockhart. So we were all quite happy there. It was a busy time. It was a time of much
change because the Communist Chinese were coming up from the south. They came into
Hangzhou while I was there.
Q: This was the long march?
BUTRICK: Part of the long march. We used to see Chinese walking along the Bund tied
by a silk cord. They were taken by their captors out near the Hangzhou Club and all
beheaded. Their heads were displayed on long poles so that all going to the Club could
see them.
We were next to the old Russian consulate, which was by then occupied by the Chinese
Communists. They also had a military group there and they used to exercise out in the
yard of the former Russian consulate. They had a captain in charge of this company and
he would march them back and forth and finally he got the idea of sitting down on one
end of the marching area and directing them by a whistle. He had a whistle that he would
blow and they would march back, etc.
We were right next door and overlooked this display. We had a chap named Russell
Jordan who was with us. Russell was quite a character. He perceived the idea of getting a
whistle and blowing it from a window upstairs. We did that and sure enough the troops
all turned around and started marching the other way. We had a lot of fun with things like
that. We were always up to some devilment.
It was a busy time. While we were there, the British concession was taken over by the
Chinese. We were in the former Russian concession, ourselves, which no longer existed.
Then we had the French concession and the Japanese concession in Hangzhou, but no
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American concession. But we still had extraterritoriality and were under American law.
We had an American court there, as well as in Shanghai.
Q: Did you have anything to do with the court?
BUTRICK: No, I had nothing to do with the court in Hangzhou. We had nothing to do
with the court in Shanghai either, although we were very friendly with the judge, Milton
Helmick, and other members of the court.
So it was an exciting time. One time we slept on board ships in the harbor at night rather
than staying in our homes because it wasn't safe to stay at home.
Q: Well, what was happening?
BUTRICK: The Communists were taking over.
Q: The Kuomintang...?
BUTRICK: If I recall correctly, and I am not sure that I do, the Kuomintang was taking
over all of the British concession and we had all the British people in our consulate for a
while with their trunks and all their baggage while they were trying to evacuate down to
Shanghai on a boat. It was quite an exciting period of time. The French had their own
little police force, all Annamese, under a French chief. The Japanese had their own police
too.
Q: What type of work were you doing there?
BUTRICK: I was administrative officer for the entire office. Of course we had Chinese
language officers that took care of the Chinese. We had Chinese writers, as they were
called, because even our Chinese language officers could not correspond with the
Chinese authorities in Chinese. We had to have Chinese writers who would do all that.
They were a nice group. We had about six writers. There were as many of them as there
were of us.
Q: Whom were we dealing with?
BUTRICK: We were dealing with the Chinese authorities there.
Q: Were they the Nationalists?
BUTRICK: They were the Nationalists at that time.
Q: Were there any problems that you can remember?
BUTRICK: No real problems. It was very amusing to me. I was recently arrived in
Hangzhou and knew nothing about China. One of the officers was a son of a missionary,
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Gordon Burke was his name. Gordon spoke Chinese fluently because he had been
brought up in China. One day he was going to the local branch of the Foreign Office...the
Foreign Office in Peking had a branch in Hangzhou...and he said, "Dick, how would you
like to come over to the Foreign Office with me?" I said, "Fine, I would love it." We had
a case of a Standard Oil boat that had been forced to pay some levies on the river which
they were not supposed to pay ...they call it likin. So he was going to complain about that
and get back the money that they had paid.
We went over to the Foreign Office and he spoke to the man in charge there in Chinese. I
suppose he was giving him greetings or something, I don't know what it was. Then they
began discussing the case in English. It turned out that this man was a graduate of
Princeton University and spoke English perfectly. In the course of the conversation this
man deliberately lied and told a false story about the whole event. It didn't seem to bother
Gordon at all.
Finally, the conversation was finished and we were walking back to the office which
wasn't far away. I said, "Gordon, how did it go?" He said, "Oh, fine, fine." I said, "What
do you mean fine. That man lied to you outright." "Oh, yes, he lied to me, that's all right.
It doesn't make any difference." He said, adding, "He knows that he lied, he knows that I
know that he lied, and he knows that I know that he knows that he lied. So it doesn't
matter," and in reality so it was! Well, that was my introduction to China. I would not
have understood at all what Gordon Burke readily understood.
Q: What about the missionaries? Did they cause a problem for the consulate, particular
with the Communists in the hinterland?
BUTRICK: They got along as well as they could with people. They really didn't cause
any trouble.
Q: What about our Yangtze River Patrol?
BUTRICK: They were a lot of fun. Sometimes the wives would come out and stay in
Hangzhou, so we got to know the ladies quite well. We would see them at the club,
playing golf. We had a very nice club in Hangzhou. The most unusual club I have ever
seen in the world, for a country club. We had a race track, a nine hole golf course inside
the race track, an eighteen hole golf course outside the race track, 12 or 15 tennis courts
on grass, a swimming pool which was indoors and in winter was covered over and made
into a ballroom.
Q: That made up for Guayaquil.
BUTRICK: That made up for Guayaquil, it certainly did. China was quite pleasant
indeed. It was exciting and pleasant.
Q: You were in Hangzhou from 1926-32. At that time how did we get along with the
Japanese?
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BUTRICK: We got along fine with the Japanese. We were good friends. The Japanese
consul general would have us out for parties, etc. and we would entertain them. We had
no problems at all.
Q: Then you moved to Shanghai in 1932.
BUTRICK: Yes. I didn't go home because we had no home leave at government expense.
You had to pay your own way if you went home. So I didn't go home until I had been in
Hangzhou for four years. Then I went home and met in Washington the lady who became
my wife. Then we went up to St. John...
Q: Again?
BUTRICK: No, I was mistaken, I didn't go earlier. You will have to go back and change
that. As a matter of fact we were married in St. John.
Q: How long were you in St. John?
BUTRICK: Oh, a very short time. I couldn't have been there for more than four months.
Q: Then ...?
BUTRICK: Then I was brought back to Washington and sent out to Shanghai.
Q: You were in Shanghai from 1932-41. What were you doing there?
BUTRICK: I was the number two in the office and ran the office. We had a political
reporter, Ed Stanton, and then we had some commercial reporters. The office was pretty
well organized along those lines. Jack Service was also there. Jimmy Pilcher was there at
that time too. The whole staff was highly competent.
Q: Things began to heat up with the Japanese while you were there.
BUTRICK: Yes, they did. You see the Japanese were at war with the Chinese before we
got into war with them. It was very amusing because the International Settlement in
Shanghai...there were various sectors of it...one was patrolled by the British, another was
patrolled by the Japanese and another by the Italians, etc. So when the war broke out we
used to see these British and Italian troops patrolling in the International Settlement
although they were at war with each other.
Q: Prior to the breaking out of war, there was the International Settlement. Did this
mean you had very little dealings with the Chinese authorities?
BUTRICK: We had dealings with the Chinese authorities too. I remember one case came
before the settlement court about a Chinese who brought birds and chickens in huge big
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baskets. There was some rule that they could put only so many in a basket. We had a
Chinese before the court one time because he had too many chickens in the basket. They
put him on the stand to explain the whole thing and he said that so far as he was
concerned it was not that he had too many chickens in the basket but that the basket was
too small for the number of chickens he had to carry. That nearly floored the American
judge. I don't remember how the case came out but remember that angle of it.
Q: What were our concerns in Shanghai at that time?
BUTRICK: There was quite a lot of American business, including the Standard Oil
Company which was all over the country. Then we had other business organizations out
there too. For example, the power plant in Shanghai was managed by an American. One
of the big businesses in those days was tung oil which was brought down the river from
up around Chungking. It was shipped to the United States. We had business with the
Philippines too. It was a very busy port.
Q: Did you get involved in the suppression of the opium trade at all?
BUTRICK: No, I don't remember anything of that sort. I think the opium trade was pretty
well over by that time. Although there were opium dens in Shanghai and the Chinese did
go to them and smoke opium.
Q: What was our navy doing, the Patrol?
BUTRICK: They were to keep order and make sure that American ships...you see we had
private American ships, Yangtze Rapid they called it, that carried cargo up and down the
river too...from Chungking down to Shanghai. We had American businesses located
along the river in smaller towns.
Q: When the Sino-Japanese war started in 1937, did that have much of an effect on us?
BUTRICK: Not to any appreciable extent. It was 1940 when I went out to China again as
Counselor of Embassy at Chungking. When I was transferred from there to Peking, I was
hoping the war would break out before I got to Peking so I wouldn't have to go there. But
I did get to Peking and it didn't break out until three or four months afterwards.
Q: But the Chinese were already at war with Japan.
BUTRICK: The Japanese were in charge in Peking, for example. All of Peking was under
Japanese control even though we had our Embassy branch office in Peking. Other
countries had their branch offices there too, but their principal offices were in Chungking.
Q: Before we came into the war in 1941, when the Chinese and Japanese were fighting
each other, did this have much of an effect on your work in Shanghai?
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BUTRICK: No, I don't think the Japanese bothered us much at all. They certainly didn't
bother us at all in Peking. But we didn't have much of an interest in Peking at that time
anyway. The National City Bank was there and we had the university there which was
run by Americans.
Q: Were you in China when the Japanese bombed the gunboat Panay?
BUTRICK: I remember the incident but can't remember just where I was...Hangzhou or
Shanghai. I knew the Consul in Nanking at that time.
Q: Who took the wounded survivors from the ship, I think.
BUTRICK: I don't know the details of that.
Many of the British river boats had a toilet on the rear end of the boat. Some member of
the royalty was out in China at that time interviewing people. This man had been shot and
injured at the time of the Panay incident. She said to him, "Oh, my, how were you
injured?" He said, "Well, Madam, I happened to be at the rear of the boat at the time and
where I was shot if it had been you, you wouldn't have even been touched."
Q: Did the Japanese get nastier towards us when you were in Shanghai?
BUTRICK: They were pushy a little bit, but not nasty. They didn't like us coming into
the Japanese area much at all.
Q: You went to Chungking around 1941. What were you doing up there?
BUTRICK: I was Counselor of Embassy. Mr. Gauss, who had been Consul General in
Shanghai, was the Ambassador at that time. Then John Carter Vincent came afterwards
and replaced me. He was a Chinese language officer. In Chungking I felt there was more
need to know Chinese than in Shanghai, which was much more cosmopolitan.
Q: Chungking was not an international city in the way Shanghai was.
BUTRICK: That's right although many people spoke English, especially the officials. But
the general public did not. So it was better to have people there like Jack Service who
spoke Chinese fluently.
Q: So then you were sent to Peking where you served...?
BUTRICK: I relieved Bob Smyth, who came home on vacation and transfer.
Q: You were doing what in Peking?
BUTRICK: I was in charge of the office there.
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Q: Now Peking was not the capital of China in those days. It had been Nanking and then
had moved to Chungking.
BUTRICK: Peking, as I say, was sort of a branch office of the Embassy.
Q: Did you deal at all with the Chinese or only with the Japanese?
BUTRICK: There were some Chinese there who we dealt with, but the Japanese were in
control of final decisions.
Q: Was there sort of the feeling among the Foreign Service there that eventually the
United States was going to go to war?
BUTRICK: Oh, we thought that before I even got to Peking. I was hoping war would
break out before I had to go to Peking because I thought for sure I would get caught in
Peking...and I was.
Q: What happened to you when the war started?
BUTRICK: Well, we had to lower the flag. We had Marine guards at the Embassy and
they were taken prisoners. The Japanese demanded that the colonel in charge of the
Marines surrender, and he came to see me. We agreed that it was absolutely hopeless to
resist, the Japanese could have killed every one of the Marines without any difficulty
whatsoever. So he had to surrender. Then we had to lower the flag. There happened to be
a Marine sergeant there and when the time came to lower the flag I said, "You go up and
take down the flag and give it to me when you bring it back down." He said, "I have
never lowered a flag this way." I said, "It is very simple. You just lower it and fold it up
the best you can and bring it down." He went up and brought the flag down. I took it
carefully in my arms and walked back through the crowd of mostly Japanese military to
the office and kept it there. I kept the flag for four years and then low and behold I was
sent out to China to reestablish our offices out there and I took the flag back with me and
we raised the same flag over the Embassy that we had taken down four years earlier.
Q: How did the Japanese treat you?
BUTRICK: Well, we were on very friendly terms with the Japanese before the war broke
out and we knew them. One of them was an American, really. He spoke English fluently.
We were treated very well by the Japanese. We had no real complaint. The only thing
was that toward the end of the six months or so that we were there, we were running out
of liquor and it would have been pretty tough after that.
Q: How did they get you out?
BUTRICK: We were sent by train from Peking to Shanghai where we were supposed to
take boats. As it happened we were in Shanghai for a couple of weeks before we were
loaded on the boat to come back home.
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While we were in Peking I had a Japanese language officer on my staff, Beppo Johansen,
a very fine man. He followed the Japanese newspapers. The Counselor of the Japanese
Embassy had made a cryptic speech to the Japanese and that speech was carried in the
Japanese language paper. Beppo saw that and said, "This means war." So we immediately
sent a triple priority telegram over the Marine radio to Washington indicating that this
had happened and that Beppo thought this meant that war was imminent. About five days
later we sent a follow up telegram at Beppo's request saying that war seemed certain in
the very near future. So, as far as we were concerned, we were in the clear about
notifying the Department.
But recently I attended a meeting of the Far East Group here in Washington and
apparently there were all kinds of other warnings that had arrived in Washington that the
war was imminent. But they stated that Roosevelt thought the war was going to start
down around the Philippines and wasn't prepared for Pearl Harbor at all. But I sometimes
wonder about that and maybe the American public in order to be thoroughly aroused had
to have something like Pearl Harbor.
Q: It is one of the theories. I find it a little hard to think that we could orchestrate
something like that. But certainly the Japanese did exactly the right thing to make us
unite.
BUTRICK: At a terrible cost of American lives and equipment. But it did arouse the
American people.
Q: My brother was on a battleship at Pearl Harbor.
BUTRICK: What happened?
Q: He is still alive. Well now, how did they get you out? You were down in Shanghai for
a couple of weeks. This would be in 1942.
BUTRICK: We stayed in a hotel where all the heating arrangements had been taken out.
We were shipped out of Shanghai on the Conte Verdi, an Italian ship with an Italian
crew. We went as far as Singapore. The Italians were very nice to us. They made fun of
the Japanese all the time. We had tea every day on board. We had a swimming pool. We
were treated beautifully. In Singapore we joined with the Suna Maru, I think it was,
coming from Japan. From then on we had a Japanese captain and no more swimming
pool, no more tea, etc. So the trip from Singapore to Lourenco Marques wasn't all that
wonderful, but it was all right. The Italian crew talked behind the backs of the Japanese.
They didn't like the Japanese at all. And when the boat went back to Shanghai, the Italian
crew sank it.
Q: What I gather was the Japanese diplomats were brought on the Gripsholm to
Lourenco Marques and you came on the Italian ship and then there was an exchange.
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BUTRICK: They took the Japanese back to Japan and then we came back to the United
States on the Gripsholm. A number of our officers were transferred direct from Lourenco
Marques to other posts.
Q: I remember talking to one person, I think it was Fred Hunt, who was left in Lourenco
Marques.
BUTRICK: Yes, Fred Hunt was there as was Tom Weil. Tom was transferred to
Australia I think.
Q: Then you came back to the United States in mid 1942. Was there much in the way of
debriefing you?
BUTRICK: We were debriefed and had to write up reports. But I don't remember the
details of that.
Q: How did they treat you once you were back?
BUTRICK: I think all of us had a "looking us over" period to see how we had come
through all this. I don't remember exactly, I must have been assigned to the Far Eastern
Division, I am not sure. I went on various trips like the one to reset up the Far Eastern
offices. Went on a trip around South America with two other people...I was an inspector
for a while too.
Q: You were sent to Santiago for a little while weren't you?
BUTRICK: I was assigned to Santiago as counselor. I was economic counselor, the
political counselor outranked me at the post, although I outranked him in the Service. It
was not a very happy arrangement. He tried to interfere in my economic affairs and I
wouldn't allow him to. Of course, we had been carrying on economic warfare and all that
sort of stuff.
Q: Could you explain a bit for somebody who wouldn't understand "economic warfare?"
BUTRICK: Well, we blacklisted some people who were still transacting with the
Germans, etc.. Chile hadn't broken with the Germans at that time. We also didn't allow
them to import things from the United States. We made sure that the German bank was in
trouble as much as possible. As a matter of fact, some of our FBI got into their German
bank and ransacked it one night.
Then all of a sudden...I think the Department or the Ambassador decided that the political
counselor and I were just too much and decided to let me go and keep the political
counselor. I can't think of his name right now but I got to know him very well. We
became friends. While I was Director General I assisted him in getting an
ambassadorship out in the Far East.
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Q: Then you came back in 1944 as an inspector for a while.
BUTRICK: I was an inspector for a while and then had other odd jobs like that. I guess I
was an inspector at the time I made the trip around South America, if I remember rightly.
That was an amusing trip. I had one man who was a professional from some firm in New
York, and Walter Lavis, who was from the Bureau of the Budget. They were very critical
of the Foreign Service, especially Walter Lavis. Among other things, you know, we used
to get allowances for food or something of that sort, so we had to send in prices of
various vegetables and things. So when we got down to Guayaquil, I thought these guys
are always complaining about this so I'll let them do the pricing. So I said that tomorrow
we would go to the market and price things. When we got to the market I said that I was
not going in to oversee this. They would be completely on their own and could price
anything they wanted to. I stayed outside and they hadn't been in very long before they
both came out, as I thought they would. They had been bitten very badly by the fleas. I
never heard any more about the price of foodstuffs.
Q: Then you came back to Washington and was working with administration from 194446.
BUTRICK: I was in charge of Administration for a short time. I don't remember how
long it was. I was the head of the F.S. administration of the Department for maybe three
or four months.
Q: Well it must have been a period of gearing up for the post-war period?
BUTRICK: I don't remember much about it at all.
Q: Was there any preparation for the Foreign Service Act of 1946, or did that come
under somebody else?
BUTRICK: I don't remember.
Q: Then you went out to the Philippines.
BUTRICK: I went out to the Philippines as advisor to the President of the Philippines.
Q: Who was that?
BUTRICK: At the time I went out there the President was Manuel Roxas and the Vice
President was Elpidio Quirino. I was actually attached to Quirino's office. He was also
Secretary of Foreign Affairs. That was automatic in the Philippine government at that
time. The Vice President was automatically head of foreign affairs.
Q: What were you doing?
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BUTRICK: I was setting up a foreign service for the Philippine government. I also
advised Quirino on various matters as he requested.
Q: What was your impression of how the Filipinos were going about this?
BUTRICK: They were very good and very efficient. I had very little dealings with Roxas
himself. I think he sort of in a way resented me a bit, but with Quirino everything went
along fine. We had a Naval man out there too. He and I were the only foreigners who
were ever invited to all of the local parties where they really took their hair down and the
women were present. The two of us were always invited to those parties, but no other
foreigners.
I had a very good impression of the Filipinos, except, of course, there were an awful lot
of crooks in the Philippines, everywhere. After I had been there several months, the wife
of one of the men said to me, "You ought to stay here with us. If you stay here for a year
you will be a millionaire." They were selling all the goods that were left over, all the war
surplus American supplies. Some of those things were sold three or four times and
everybody who bought them made a big profit on the resale. After she said that to me I
decided it was time for me to get out. So at the very first opportunity when Quirino
decided he wanted to make a trip around the world coming across the Pacific, I said I
would go with him as far as the United States. By that time the Philippine foreign service
had been thoroughly well organized. They had opened offices here in the United States
and a few other places. Some of the men in my instruction class eventually became
ambassadors.
So when we got back to the United States I severed my connections with the Philippines
and went back to the Department.
But that was an interesting assignment. All of my assignments were interesting.
Q: Then you went to Iceland shortly thereafter?
BUTRICK: I went to Iceland as EE and MP and from there Jack Peurifoy, who was
Under Secretary at the time, asked me to come into the Department and be Director
General of the Foreign Service. I couldn't very well say no. I would have liked to have
stayed in Iceland a little longer. I was only there for nineteen months.
Q: You were the Minister in Iceland. What were our major concerns there at that time?
BUTRICK: The major concern at that particular time was the airfield, Keflavik. It was a
stopover point for our big planes going to Europe. We had to have a long runway and
make sure that we could land there and refuel and go on. So that was the principal thing,
but there were other things. American business was anxious to get in too. One of the
American airlines went through there.
Q: How did you find dealing with the Icelandic government?
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BUTRICK: The Icelandic government...I was dealing with the Minister, Bjarni
Benediksson, in the Department of Foreign Affairs and going back and forth every week,
sometimes twice a week. Our office was not very far from the Department of Foreign
Affairs. I became very close to the man I dealt with on a regular basis. He didn't want me
to leave when I left, he wanted me to stay on. He made a very nice speech at the time of
my departure. He said, "In the nineteen months that Mr. Butrick has been here we have
had more to do in foreign affairs than we had in the previous nineteen years." So we got
along very well together.
I liked the Icelanders very much and apparently they liked me. They are a highly, highly
independent people. You have to be terribly careful about everything there. Getting them
to join NATO was a major problem. The party in power just barely had a majority in
Parliament. So it had to be their idea. It couldn't be mine. I had to be very careful that
joining NATO was entirely their idea. I was in the background. They would ask me a
question and I would say, "I really don't know but will get in touch with Washington and
find out." So I fed them the information, but I didn't force it on them at all. You had to be
very, very careful with the Icelanders because of their love of independence. He also said
that if Mr. Butrick ever felt that he was the representative of the most powerful nation in
the world to the weakest nation in the world, I never noticed it. It was true, I had never
put forth our power in any respect. I wonder if my successors have been equally as
fortunate as I was.
Then the Parliament voted to join NATO and there was a great ruckus there with stones
being thrown at Parliament. When the Prime Minister was coming out of the building
some Icelander woman spat right in his face. So the Foreign Minister called me about
6:00 that night and said, "Dick, I think I had better get out of the country as soon as
possible. Can you get me out tonight?" I said, "I don't know, but I will be in touch." I
called up the airfield. Fortunately I was on very good terms with the airfield people. They
had an air sea rescue plane which was the only one they had capable of flying to the
United States. It would have been a B-17. He called me back and said, "Yeah, we can
take him, but not before 10:00 tonight. We have to get the plane set for the trip." I said,
"That would be fine."
Then I called up Washington on the phone and got the night duty officer there. I told him
what was happening and that the Foreign Minister was coming on a plane and would land
in Springfield, Mass. I told him from then on it was up to him and he took over.
So he went to the United States on that plane and the man I talked to in the Department
had a plane there to meet him in Springfield to bring him to Washington. He arrived there
an hour before the meeting of NATO. So Iceland became a Charter Member of NATO by
one hour.
Q: Then you were the Director General of the Foreign Service from 1949-52. You were
there during McCarthyism weren't you?
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BUTRICK: I don't remember it being a problem, so maybe it was over by that time.
Q: It may have been. What were your major concerns?
BUTRICK: Well, the major concerns were the Foreign Service, to preserve and protect it
and make sure it had its rightful place in the Department's hierarchy. Of course, I also
served as an advisor in foreign matters to Jack Peurifoy who was Deputy Under Secretary
for Administration. His assistant was very nice. I had a very pleasant relationship. I had a
small office and a couple of secretaries.
Q: Did you get involved in ambassadorial assignments?
BUTRICK: No, I didn't.
Q: That keeps moving from place to place. Did Congress call you up from time to time?
BUTRICK: No, it did not. I don't recall Congress ever calling me. However, Jack
Peurifoy was in almost daily touch with various Congressmen.
Q: Then you went to Montreal.
BUTRICK: I went to Montreal. They offered me two different embassies, and this may
seem a little strange to you, but my mother was a great influence in my life and she was
ill and in a nursing home in my hometown of Lockport, N.Y. and I wanted to be near her.
In order to be near her I took a demotion and went to Montreal as Consul General. I was
promised, however, by Loy Henderson, that he would make me an ambassador at some
later date.
I was happy in Montreal but I expected to be made an ambassador, but I never was.
Instead of that I was transferred to Sao Paulo, probably the most important consulate
general in the world. Did you know that Sao Paulo is the third largest city in the world? It
wasn't then, but it is now, after Tokyo/Kyoto and Mexico City. New York is fifth and I
think Seoul is fourth.
As Consul General in Montreal I was very well thought of there. One of the Montreallers
said, "I have never seen an American who came to Montreal that so quickly adapted
himself to Canadian customs as you have." But that was my whole life. I never wanted to
force my ideas onto other people. Let them have their own civilizations the way they
want them.
Q: How long were you in Sao Paulo?
BUTRICK: I was there until I retired. I also had a very nice assignment there. I moved
our offices from a congested place downtown to a different area, as I had done in
Montreal too. I don't have anything outstanding to say about Sao Paulo except that there
were a lot of American business interests there. I was very close to the Chamber of
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Commerce. I attended all the meetings, etc. They still send me their bulletins and their
year book.
Q: The Brazilians at that time felt very close to the United States and had sent a
contingent into Italy during the war.
BUTRICK: As a matter of fact, wherever I have been I never had any difficulty with the
local people at all. I took them for what they were and tried to adapt myself as much as
possible to them. I think it is wrong to try to force our particular type of civilization onto
other people. If they like us and want to model themselves after us, that is fine, but to try
to force our civilization onto them I think is wrong.
Q: Then you retired when?
BUTRICK: I retired the first of September, 1959. I have been retired a long time.
Q: Well, I want to thank you very much for this.
BUTRICK: I retired at the age 65 because of my rank in the Service as Career Minister,
but most people have to retire at 60.
Q: You came in before there was a Foreign Service and you left in 1959 and the Foreign
Service started in 1946. In that period of time did you see any major changes?
BUTRICK: We became more active after the Foreign Service was organized. We were
more aggressive. We were more self-assertive, I guess, which I always tried to avoid
being. I think it is a big mistake myself, I don't know how it is today. I wouldn't want to
put anything on the record about my feelings today.
Q: I was thinking more about the differences at the end of your career and the beginning
of your career.
BUTRICK: I never thought of it that way. I thought I was in a career and I just went
along and took what came. As a matter of fact I never pushed myself at any time for any
job I got. I was often separated from my family - one time for over 15 months.
Q: I think this was really typical until quite recently. Well, I want to thank you very much.
BUTRICK: I am very happy to participate. It may interest you to know that after
retirement I had bestowed upon me the following honors:
by Iceland: Grand Cross of the Order of Icelandic Falcon
by the Philippines: The Lakan of the Ancient Order of Sikatuna
Q: I think this was fascinating.
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End of interview
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